The Road to Safwan: The 1st Squadron, 4th Cavalry in the 1991 ...

The Breach 117
on his flight suit and over that he had put on his chemical suit.
He wondered whether he would be too hot. Later in the day he
had to take his flight suit off. He strapped two AT-4s to the generator
to his front and borrowed the SPC Mark Aide’s M16A2
rifle. Since there were no crew-served weapons assigned to HQ
33, CPT Tedesco put the M16A2 on automatic and set it on the
deck beside him. He and the crew were concerned that as they
advanced behind the ground troops they would be vulnerable
to small arms attack and/or attack by lightly armed infantrymen.
As he climbed up into the track commander’s hatch to
begin the day he found himself surrounded by four “Jerry
Cans” of gasoline that were needed to power the command
post’s generators. In addition, the camouflage nets and the soldiers’
personal gear were piled high all around him. He found
he had to sit a good distance up in the hatch in order to see
where they were going and even then he could see only
straight ahead. He realized that even with his NOMEX suit he
would have no chance if the gas cans got hit by small arms fire.
However, at this late point there was nowhere else to put them.
They stayed where they were as the TOC rolled out following
the ground troops. 5
As the sun came up, CPT Morrison had the field trains finish
packing. He then moved them over to the location of the
101st Forward Support Battalion. He reported in to his commander
and then departed with the forward area support team
(FAST) to link up with the combat trains. He would remain
near and then follow the combat trains for the next few days.
CPT Maloney, 1LT Vanderfeltz, and 1SG Collangelo were the
senior soldiers left behind with the field trains.
Not everything went as smoothly as perceived by the public
and postwar commentators. For example, while observing
the troop’s M577 command post and the combat trains as they
pulled out of their assembly area, A Troop’s new first sergeant,
Gary Parkey, discovered they were heading in the wrong direction.
Getting nervous, he called his executive officer, 1LT Jon S.
Raynal, who was inside the command post track taking reports.
After Parkey’s call, Raynal popped out of the track commander’s
hatch, checked his GPS, and confirmed the first sergeant’s
fears. Parkey drove his HMMWV to the front of the column and